Musings of a geek.

Update: I would just like to make a note of the phone call I just received, from Mr. Rosenberg himself. I did not continue the call once I realized who it was because I didn’t not want to have to deal with a bully, plus I was working. Mr. Rosenberg, if you would like to have a discussion, you can use the contact page like a civilized person. Calling my personal phone is NOT fucking cool.

Oh, and if you want me to edit this post or remove it, ~~you can just go fuck right off~~ I can’t be bothered to.

The new Esterbrook company is quite the show. I remember when the new Esterbrook J pens were announced. It was a turd of a pen. A cheap Chinese pen being sold under the name of a great historic pen company. Reviews of the pen were not good. King of Esterbrook, Brian Anderson, did a review of the pen, and pretty much said it was crap.

They fell under the radar mostly. I hadn’t heard about them very much recently, but apparently Robert Rosenberg hasn’t given up. He recently put a new pen up for sale, on both eBay and Massdrop, the M-2. For “sale” for $50, the pen looks like a cheap Chinese pen that has been made to be as ostentatious as possible. A pen that you could easily find on eBay for $5.

The drop didn’t even make it a day before the truthful but “negative” comments started coming in. For the $50 price of the drop, you can get a nicely restored vintage Esterbrook (a true Esterbrook). You’ll have a much better pen, and even some money left over. Or if one still desires a cheap Chinese pen, plenty can be found on eBay at their appropriate price point.

But the best part of the entire drop wasn’t the comments, or the fact that Massdrop closed the drop after only 10 people purchased pens, it was the after the drop was closed and then cancelled when Massdrop sent out an email to the people that were participating. I should also mention that the first 100 people to buy the pen would also get a set of ink cartridges. Ink cartridges that didn’t work with the pen they were buying.

Massdrop has deleted the listing now, so unfortunately we can’t go back to read the comments, but the email that they sent out to buyers said that Mr. Rosenberg wanted Massdrop to censor the comment section and delete everything negative about the company.

Interesting. If you check out the company’s Facebook page, you will find it devoid of anything negative. Must be nice to be able to make your company look like a perfect little angel. Of course it also means that customers can’t see the true company.

“We are thrilled to bring back the Esterbrook brand of fine writing Instruments and we look forward to restoring this iconic name with products which utilize the Esterbrook Heritage of design and quality”

Well Mr. Rosenberg, I suggest you actually read your own statement, because you are doing a pretty shittastic job at it so far, and the majority of the fountain pen community thinks you are greedy and are just using the Esterbrook name to make some quick cash, before you sell it off like you did with Conklin.